A global public good is a good that has the three following properties:
- It is non-rivalrous. Consumption of this good by anyone does not reduce the quantity available to other agents.
- It is non-excludable. It is impossible to prevent anyone from consuming that good.
- It is available worldwide.
This concept is an extension of American economist Paul Samuelson's notion of public goods to the economics of globalisation.
The theoretical concept of public goods does not distinguish with regard to the geographical region in which a good may be produced or consumed. However some theorists, such as Inge Kaul, use the term global public good to mean a public good which is non-rival and non-excludable throughout the whole world, as opposed to a public good which exists in just one national area. Knowledge is a canonical example of a global public good. In some academic literature it has become associated with the concept of a common heritage of mankind.
The stability of the UK's financial system has been described as a global public good by the IMF due to the systems's 'size and role ... in global intermediation puts it in a position to originate and transmit shocks to the global financial system, but also to dampen them'.
Famous quotes containing the words global and/or public:
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“There is a cannibalism that’s loose in our society in which public figures such as the Clintons could try to come into this town and do something good for this country and then they get hammered away even though they’re trying to do the right thing.”
—David R. Gergen (b. 1942)